


The Best Imitation of Myself

by Kroki_Refur



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-04
Updated: 2007-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27557164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kroki_Refur/pseuds/Kroki_Refur
Summary: It's uncanny to see -- you'd really think it was me.
Kudos: 2





	The Best Imitation of Myself

“So wait,” says Dean, and the look on his face is something between amusement and abject terror, “you’re telling me these guys wear _pantyhose_?”  
  
Sam sighs. “It’s just called _hose_ , Dean,” he says, for what feels like the millionth time, but Dean doesn’t seem reassured.  
  
“What’s the difference?” he asks.  
  
And, well, that’s a fair question. It’s not like Sam’s an _expert_ on any of this, anyway, but there has to be a way to make Dean swallow his pride and get with the program, preferably _before_ Sam’s old enough to start drawing his pension ( _and before anyone else dies_ ). “Hose is more... manly,” he says, nodding firmly as if it’s an incontrovertible fact.   
  
“ _Manly?_ ” says Dean, and Sam actually didn’t know his voice could go that high. “Sam, have you _seen_ those guys? They’re wearing freakin _knickerbockers_.”  
  
Sam manages to cover his grin by rolling his eyes. “Dude,” he hisses, “shut up. Someone’s gonna hear you.” He smiles sheepishly at two passing monks. “Look, we need to blend in, OK? Someone in this place has a cursed object, and they’re gonna see us coming a mile off if we look like...” he gestures at Dean’s battered leather jacket and jeans, his own worn plaid, perfect for invisibility at truck stops and diners and completely out of place at a Renaissance Faire “...us,” he finishes, and feels kinda lame, because he’s not really sure what it is that they look like.   
  
“So you wear the goddamn pantyhose,” mutters Dean, and the amusement is pretty much gone now, replaced with rising panic.  
  
“They don’t make them big enough for me,” says Sam, and that gets an incredulous eyebrow-raise from Dean that makes blood rise to his cheeks, and he’s on the back foot again. “ _Long_ enough,” he says, even though he _knows_ Dean knows what he means, “they don’t make them _long_ enough.”  
  
“You know why?” Dean asks, and Sam can’t resist rolling his eyes in anticipation of whatever’s coming next. “Because they’re for _women_ ,” Dean says, like Sam’s a total idiot, and suddenly Sam’s tired of arguing.  
  
“Fine,” he says. “You know what? Fine. I guess _saving people, hunting things_ only counts when you get to keep your male pride, right? God forbid someone should think you were anything less than Rambo.”  
  
Dean looks startled, then stung. To be honest, Sam’s kind of startled himself, but before he can figure out where _that_ came from, Dean snatches the pantyhose ( _hose_ , the _hose_ , dammit) out of Sam’s hand and stalks off to the tent.  
  
Sam sits on the grass and watches the fair. It’s a sunny day, bright enough that Sam has to squint against the glare, and the place is full of colours, like someone spilled a bag of sequins and beads in the middle of the field; women in Elizabethan dresses smile at men who look like they’ve walked right off the cover of a trashy fantasy novel, and everyone seems right at home, like they’re having the time of their lives.  
  
Sam feels Dean before he hears him, a glowering presence behind him, but he doesn’t turn until he’s rearranged his features into a carefully neutral expression. It doesn’t do him much good, though: the first sight of Dean’s thunderstruck face between the high collar of his doublet and the brim of his feathered cap is enough to make him snort involuntarily.  
  
“That’s great,” says Dean. “You just keep on laughing there, college boy.” He leans closer, and Sam pulls back a step, wondering if he’s in for an ass-kicking. “Just ask yourself this,” says Dean, “is it more pathetic to wear panty-hose, or to be strangled with them while you’re sleeping?”  
  
Sam tries really, really hard to wipe the grin off his face, but he suspects it just winds up looking like a grimace. “Right,” he says. “I’ll definitely bear that in mind.”  
  
Dean doesn’t dignify that with an answer, just starts to stride off into the crowd. After two steps, though, he turns. “By the way,” he says, “I am _way_ more manly than Rambo. We’re talking Chuck Norris levels, here.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” says Sam, because he’s working so hard not to break down right there that he can’t even come up with a decent reply.  
  
“Ladies,” says Dean, nodding at a couple of girls in brocaded dresses with _really_ low-cut bodices. They giggle at him, and Dean glances back at Sam. "Chuck Norris, Sammy," he says, "don't you forget it," and disappears into the fair. Sam spends a couple of minutes trying to catch sight of him again, but he’s become part of the mass of people, blending in like he belongs there. Sam settles down to wait, and wonders why in the middle of all this activity that would seem totally weird to most normal people, he’s still the one who feels like a freak.  
  
\----  
  
The room’s so white that Sam feels like he’s walked into – nothing. Like the world doesn’t exist any more, it’s all just faded into whiteness. It creeps him the hell out, and he shudders, wondering who on Earth thought this colour scheme would be soothing and healing – not that he’s particularly looking to be soothed or healed (not right this instant, anyway), but still, there are plenty of people in this place who are, and he can’t help worrying about them a little.  
  
The only thing that isn’t white in the room is Dean’s head. Sam takes a moment to blink and focus his eyes properly, so that he stops seeing featureless whiteness with Dean’s disembodied, drooling head floating in the middle of it, because he has enough nightmares to deal with already, thanks. A moment later, a bed resolves itself, and he moves forward, still a little disconcerted and ready to get the hell out of there asap.  
  
“Dean,” he mutters, but Dean’s eyes remain closed, head canted a little to one side on the pillow. Sam rolls his eyes and reaches down to shake Dean’s arm. “Dean, Jesus, come on!” He hunches his shoulders, feeling prickling all down his back. He can’t hear _anything_ , and the silence is as bad as the whiteness, like he’s in a surrealist movie or something.  
  
Dean’s eyes blink open. “Hey,” he slurs. “I ordered a _hot_ nurse.”  
  
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sam mutters, trying to squash the ripple of concern in his belly. They’ve dosed Dean with something, which Sam was expecting, of course, but it’s still disturbing to _see_ it. “Come on,” he says. “I’ve got you a wheelchair outside.”  
  
“Don’t need no-- Sammy? That you?” Dean squints and waves a hand at Sam, poking him in the ribs in the process. “Gotta be you, so freakin tall,” he mutters, like he’s talking to himself, then screws up his mouth for a second and giggles. And Sam wants to get out of there, sure, but--  
  
“Did you just _giggle_?” he says, and Dean does it again.  
  
“You’re a _nurse_ ,” he says, like it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world.  
  
Sam frowns. “Well, I wasn’t exactly gonna break you out of this place dressed as a fireman,” he says.  
  
Dean’s still sniggering. “Nurse is a _girl’s_ job,” he says.  
  
Sam closes his eyes and counts to ten backwards. Even then, he can’t stop himself from getting involved. “Nursing is a highly skilled profession, Dean,” he says, _knowing_ it’s a bad idea, “it’s nothing to be ashamed--”  
  
“You’re a girl!” Dean says, looking utterly delighted, and Sam’s torn between wanting to punch him in the face and wanting to hug him, because that fucking _grin_ of his is the only thing in this place that isn’t giving Sam the creeping horrors right now.  
  
“Fine,” Sam says, deciding enough is enough and bending down to haul Dean out of the bed. “Next time you decide you’re insane, I’ll just let you get on with it.”  
  
Dean frowns, but stays on his feet, letting Sam guide him to the exit. “’m not crazy, Nurse Samantha.”  
  
“You could have fooled me,” Sam says, even though he knows it was _crazy_ or _prison_ , and prisons are a hell of a lot harder to break people out of. “And it’s Nurse Matthews.” New day, new name.  
  
“Nurse Ratched, is what,” says Dean, plopping down in the wheelchair. “Hey,” he yells at a girl passing by, all big eyes and hunched shoulders, “my brother’s a girl!”  
  
Sam tenses, but the girl looks over her shoulder and smiles, slow and genuine. “My brother’s an alien,” she says. “He put a chip in my arm.”  
  
Dean nods like that makes total sense. “Sucks to be you,” he says. “You should kick his ass.”  
  
The girl just turns back and shuffles on her way, and Sam untenses and heads for the nearest exit and doesn’t think about how well Dean fits in here.  
  
\----  
  
After the third wolf-whistle, Dean looks about ready to kill someone. “Jesus,” he says, “do I have _ogle me_ tattooed on my ass or something?”  
  
Sam looks very deliberately at Dean’s ass, earning himself a swat on the arm. “You’re a sick bastard, you know that?” says Dean, sending hunted looks around himself like he’s expecting someone to jump him any second.  
  
“Look, you should take it as a compliment,” Sam says, going for his most earnest face. “Lots of guys’d kill for this much attention.”  
  
“Yeah?” says Dean, scowling. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be drawing attention to ourselves.”  
  
“Dean,” says Sam, “believe me, you’re blending in perfectly.”  
  
A guy in a cowboy hat and fur coat appears in front of them, licking his lips suggestively at Dean. “Well, hey there,” he says, and winks. Dean grabs Sam around the waist and pulls him close.  
  
“Taken,” he says in a strangled voice, and Sam tries to cover his surprise with a polite smile. The guy in the cowboy hat shrugs and wanders off, and Dean says “Who the hell had the bright idea of coming to San Francisco during Pride week, anyway?”  
  
“Uh, I think that was Marcus Jenkins,” says Sam, and Dean shoots him a blank look. “Our friendly resident psychotic homophobe spirit?” Sam says, and Dean curls his lip.  
  
“Remind me to cross him off the Christmas card list,” he says.  
  
They pass a couple of half-naked women kissing, and Dean slows to a crawl. “OK, maybe this isn’t so bad,” he says, and Sam starts to rethink the part about blending in.  
  
“Hey, Sam!”   
  
Sam doesn’t turn his head, long years of practice and his current name is Joe. “Sam!” the voice calls again, and then someone’s grabbing his arm, Sam catches bright teeth and familiar features before he finds himself in a bear hug. “I haven’t seen you in years!” says the voice that Sam is just beginning to place as _Marshall, from sophomore year_ , and then the guy – Marshall – pulls back and Sam’s looking into his face again.  
  
“Uh, hi,” says Sam. “Good to see you.”  
  
Marshall nods and beams like Sam’s just professed undying love. “You look great! What have you been doing? I gotta say I had no idea you were gay, I mean, obviously, you never can tell with people, but even so, I mean, didn’t you have that gorgeous girl, what was her name, Jennifer?”  
  
Sam blinks at the sudden pause. “Jessica,” he says, gut twisting like it always does, even now. “It...didn’t work out.”  
  
Marshall gives him a sympathetic smile. “Always rough when we finally find ourselves,” he says. “And this is your boyfriend? Hi, I’m Marshall, Sam’s friend from college, he probably hasn’t mentioned me, we only had, like, two classes together, but we had a lot of fun. Sam’s always such a laugh riot, but I guess you know that, right?”  
  
“Uh,” says Dean.  
  
“Course you do, smart guy like you,” says Marshall, and grins at Sam. “Never figured you to go for the butch type, Sam, I guess you're full of surprises, right?”   
  
Sam shoots Dean a grin and Dean fumes silently back, but Marshall’s still in full tilt. “Hey, you guys want to come hang out with me and my friends? We’re going to a bar a couple of blocks over, it’s a great place, _Buffalo Bill's_ , it's, like, retro chic or something.”  
  
Dean raises his eyebrows, and Sam silently agrees. _Buffalo Bill’s_ is at the epicentre of all the mysterious deaths of gay men, and they were heading over there anyway. Sam’s glad that their cover is so firmly fixed in place, but at the same time he can’t help but feel like a traitor. Being _Joe Ellis, gay man_ is one thing, but being _Sam Winchester, gay man who went out with Jessica Moore_ seems unaccountably wrong, even though she’s never going to know.  
  
There’s no time to brood about it, though, because Marshall’s sweeping them away from the crowded street and into an unremarkable bar, and Sam is _Sam Winchester, gay man_ for the rest of the night, and it doesn’t seem fair that he finally gets to use his real name but everything else is still a lie, but it’s not the first time he’s done that and he knows it won’t be the last.  
  
There’s beer and shots and pool, and at some point Sam’s not sitting next to Dean any more, Dean’s sitting in the middle of a group of people regaling them with exploits that Sam is _pretty_ sure are entirely invented, or at least heavily adapted, but real or not, there’s a level of graphic detail that’s making the crowd roar with laughter and Sam’s cheeks burn, and it’s not until Dean looks up and gives him an eighteen-carat grin, gesturing at the gorgeous girl who’s hanging on his arm and mouthing _fag-hag_ that Sam realises he’s sitting on his own.  
  
\----  
  
The drinking isn’t really helping Sam’s headache, but he’s doing a great job of pretending it is. That makes sense, because if there’s one thing he’s great at, it’s _pretending_ , always pretending. What he doesn’t get is Dean, because Dean never really pretends, Dean is just _Dean_ , maybe calls himself by a different name (and then forgets what it is ten minutes later) or waves an official ID in people’s faces, but he never really makes compromises, never stops being _Dean_. Sam knows half of their job is convincing people that they’re something they’re not, and he doesn’t get how Dean manages to be simultaneously terrible and the best Sam’s ever seen.  
  
“I feel like I can tell you anything, you know?” says the girl, and she’s looking up at him like he’s some kind of saviour, but Sam can’t even remember her name. He takes another swig of his beer and hears Dean’s laughter behind him, loud, easy, like he’s exactly where he wants to be.  
  
“Can you tell me what you saw on the fifth?” he asks, and she does, tells him everything like they’ve known each other for ever, and Sam doesn’t even _like_ her, he can tell just from the half hour he’s been talking to her, she giggles at things that aren’t even funny and snaps her gum and she’s _dumb_ and Christ, why is he _like_ this?  
  
Eventually, she goes to find her boyfriend, and Sam gets another beer. He’s had five-- no, wait, six? Probably six. There’s six glasses on the table in front of him, anyway, but maybe one of them belongs to the girl whose name he can’t remember. Whatever. The point is, he’s probably had too much to drink, but it’s helping his headache ( _except it’s actually not_ ), and Dean gets drunk all the time, hell, Dean’s drunk _now_ , laughing with those – whoever they are, doesn’t really matter, Dean could make friends if he was marooned on _Mars_ , so there’s no reason, anyway, no reason Sam shouldn’t be a little bit drunk, too.  
  
It’s an issue, Sam decides. He forgets what exactly he’s thinking about, but he knows it’s an issue, so he tries to work back through his thoughts to figure out what the issue is. Oh, right. The issue is that when Dean drinks, he gets happier and happier and people like him more and more, and when Sam drinks--  
  
“Hey,” says Dean, dropping into the chair opposite. “Dude, I just made, like, two hundred bucks.” He smiles, God, he looks like the fucking Platonic ideal of happiness (and Sam always hated fucking Plato).  
  
“Great,” Sam says. “Can we go now?”  
  
Dean’s grin falters a little and Sam feels like cutting his own tongue out. “I’ve still got some business to take care of,” Dean says.  
  
“Fine,” says Sam, and he needs to leave now, because he’s actually a lot drunker than he thought he was and he’s getting mean, and that’s not fair. “I’ll just, I’ll go back by myself, OK?”  
  
Dean frowns at him, then shrugs. “You OK to walk?”  
  
The motel’s two hundred yards from the bar. “I think I can make it,” Sam says, and tries not to wince at the sarcastic edge to his tone.  
  
He’s ten steps out of the bar when he hears a blast of music as the door opens and closes behind him. “Hey,” says Dean. “Wait up.”  
  
Sam slows his stride, but only a little. Dean jogs up, breath steaming in the still air.   
  
“Thought you had stuff to do,” says Sam, and Dean shrugs.  
  
“Action was pretty lame,” he says, like that explains anything.  
  
“Wouldn’t you rather hang out with your new buddies?” Sam says, and God, he sounds like a whiny brat.   
  
“Those good ole boys?” Dean snorts. “Dude, I swear, if anyone mentions manure to me one more time, I'm gonna smack a bitch.”  
  
“Right,” Sam huffs. “So you’d rather hang out with baby brother.”  
  
“Not like I got a choice,” Dean grins, and Sam stops, suddenly, feeling like someone’s punched him in the gut.  
  
“That’s the whole point, Dean,” he says. “You _do_ have a choice.” _You’ve always been the one who’s had a choice_.  
  
Dean stops and stares at him, smile finally dropping off his face. “What are you talking about?” he asks, in the careful voice of someone who’s just realised he’s misunderstood the entire conversation.  
  
“God,” says Sam, and he wishes he wasn’t so _drunk_ and his head wasn’t throbbing _so fucking much_ , because he _knows_ he doesn’t want to talk about this, it’ll just make him uncomfortable, make them both uncomfortable, but he can’t seem to _stop_. “Why do you even-- I mean, you don’t have to. Jesus.” He’s not saying it right, and he doesn’t want to be saying it at all, because if Dean realises he might leave, but it’s not fair to let him stay under false pretences, and Sam’s not even sure that makes sense, but that’s pretty much par for the course right now. “You could do anything,” Sam says, "you could be anyone you want, I mean really _be_ anyone, and you just, you don't even--" He shakes his head, suddenly hating the way he sounds, like he's jealous ( _and he is_ ), like he's desperate. “How can you stand to be around me?" he asks, and he didn't mean to say that _at all_ , but now he's started, he can't seem to stop. "Hell, sometimes even _I_ can’t stand to be around me.”  
  
And there, he’s said it. Dean’s standing there staring at him, with this completely blank look on his face, and Sam thinks _this is it, this is where he finally_ gets _it_ , and he wishes he could make Dean stay, but he took his own chances when he could and now he needs to let Dean do the same.  
  
And then Sam’s on his back, gravel digging into the palms of his hands and the back of his head, and Dean a solid weight on his stomach and elbows, pinning him to the ground.  
  
“Fuck,” says Sam. “What the fuck, Dean?”  
  
Dean’s right up in his face and Sam’s seen that look before, pure murder, but it’s never been directed at _him_ , and suddenly he’s convinced Dean’s gone insane and is going to kill him.  
  
“Listen up, you son-of-a-bitch,” says Dean, “no-one talks shit about my brother except me, you got that?”  
  
“Uh,” says Sam, and yes, OK, he’s pretty drunk, but this is weird, right? It’s not _normal_ , anyway. “I _am_ your brother.”  
  
“Always with the details,” says Dean, quirking an eyebrow, and Sam’s still trying to wrap his head around that when Dean says, “Do it again and I’ll kick your ass. Harder.”  
  
Then Dean’s hauling him to his feet, and Sam still has no idea what just happened, but he lets Dean drag him the last fifty yards and dump him in the bed. He wants to stay awake, to try and puzzle out the events of the evening, but he’s only got as far as _that was weird_ when he’s waking up feeling like a particularly enthusiastic marching band has set up shop in his head. He manages to pry his eyelids open on the fifth try, and there’s a cup of coffee right in his line of vision. Propped up in front of it is a note which reads _Remember: I’ll kick your ass_.  
  
Sam only misses the cup twice. The coffee doesn’t really help his headache, but the note does, a little, and Sam figures that maybe that’s good enough.


End file.
